Articles Posted inTransportation

On March 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided the case of Vermont Railway, Inc. v. Town of Shelburne. The U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont granted the railway a permanent injunction against an ordinance passed by the Town of Shelburne, VT, that placed severe restrictions on the railway’s use of a storage facility to be used for the stockpiling and storage of large quantities of rock salt to be used in the railroad’s winter de-icing operations.

On February 28, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), “in consultation with the Federal Railroad Administration and pursuant to the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) of 2015, issued a Final Rule “to revise and clarify requirements for comprehensive oil spill response plans (COSRPs)” and “[e]xpands the applicability for COSRPs; modernizes the requirements for COSRPs; requires railroads to share information about high-hazard flammable train (HHFT) operations with State and tribal emergency response commissions to improve community preparedness; and incorporates by reference a voluntary standard.

On February 26, 2019, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a joint memorandum (Memo) clarifying how state transportation departments that have been delegated responsibility under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) should implement federal directives to streamline the environmental review and approvals of major infrastructure projects. While the Memo establishes no new affirmative duties on these state agencies, it reflects yet another step in the Trump administration’s continued efforts to ensure collective adherence to its goal of expediting environmental review under NEPA.

Let’s say you run a business, but public transit doesn’t serve your location very well. You want to offer transportation to your customers or your employees. Maybe you want to offer an airport shuttle to customers or pick up employees for their daily commute in vans or buses. Maybe you want to build an aerial gondola to a baseball stadium and charge riders to use it. Or maybe you’re an entrepreneur who wants to sell transportation to other businesses or to the public. You need to know how different kinds of transportation services are regulated, and who regulates them.